Probability-based location anonymity algorithm

As one of the most effective location privacy preservation technologies, the k-anonymity model provides safeguards for location privacy of the mobile client against vulnerabilities for abuse by constructing an anonymous area of k users including the protected one. However, most existing k-anonymity models only utilize the users who are sending requests at recent time. If there are not enough requesting users, the generated anonymous area of the k-anonymity model will be larger than expected. In this paper, a Probability-based Location Anonymity (PLA) algorithm is proposed for protecting location privacy of the mobile users in a road network. The PLA model takes advantage of the historical path track of the users who are not sending the request currently, and then computes the probability into the anonymous section so that it can greatly reduce the size of the anonymous area. Experimental results show that the PLA algorithm is superior to the k-anonymity and it increases its anonymous efficiency enormously. © 2015, Science Press. All right reserved.